Older CD players v new models

[gbbird]

My arcam alpha 7se has finally given up the ghost after a good 10 years+ service (laser/transport packed up). I haven't purchased a cd player for many years, so was just wondering if the cd players of today are significantly better than their older cousins, and if so what are the best buys nowadays?

Or would I be just as well getting the arcam fixed?

[Hoover.]

I had a Roksan Caspian Cd player, which was over £1000 new about 10 years ago ........ but with slowly upgrading speakers and amp it started sounding dull.......... bought a Rega Apollo and WOW, music spritly and reinvigerated my love for it

[telecat]

I'd check and see if the ARCAM can be fixed.It's not the legendary Ring DAC ARCAM CD Players the CD9 and CD92 but it is quite good. If you have to ditch it then it's a case of what's your budget? Current ARCAMs remain good players and a lot of the better Japanese and European players can play SACD as well. It's not popular here in Europe but it's a big market in Japan and the US, (comparitively speaking), alternatively some of the better specced Blu-Ray Players are very good audio players as well. The Bets are the Cambridge Audio BD players along with the OPPO versions

[AlexWF]

I have a Cyrus CD player that's around 15 years old. It was a snip at £300 last year and in my opinion is much better value that a new CD of at twice the price. Stick with the old stuff!

[T1berious]

I'm re doing my listening room after many years without it (moved in with other half but we've finally got a place big enough for a listening room without causing strife)

I auditioned the Audiolab 8200CDQ (going to use it as a music "gateway" hanging a sonus \ NAS off it) I was pretty impressed, I used to have an Orelle CD 100e that was lush but alas it went.

Depending on your budget I'd look at something that could be a bit future proof, if not SACD then the ability to accept other digital sources mean you'll enjoy the next wave of music delivery.

Also depends on what your partnering it all with

Miss my Arcam Alpha....

[Adrian W]

T1berious said:

Depending on your budget I'd look at something that could be a bit future proof, if not SACD then the ability to accept other digital sources mean you'll enjoy the next wave of music delivery.

Iv'e been looking for a few months now and for exactly that reason i'm going for a DCS Puccini and their UClock, of course I will be selling the kids, cat and house to pay for the thing.


http://www.dcsltd.co.uk/product/puccini-cd-sacd-pl...

[Frances The Mute]

It's all relative. My ancient Naim CDi kicks the arse of many CD players and a lot of turntables.

You could get the Arcam rebuilt/upgraded as it's still a decent sounding piece of kit.
I believe Avondale Audio in Chesterfield can do this for you in a variety of specifications.

[Crackie]

Players are certainly getting better imho but I find the difficulties arise when deciding between a good quality 'latest tech' machine and an older high end machine which employs earlier technology.

For example how does a new Audiolab M-Dac compare to a S/H Benchmark or Cyrus DAC-XP ?

In answer to the OP's question I think there are pros and cons for both; older high end often contains better sounding output stages and sound better when playing standard red book CDs. Their disadvantage is age and the potential to let you down like the Arcam. New gear in the same price range as S/H high end is still likely to sound very good with standard CD but will be under warranty. Choose the right new player and it will accept higher resolution inputs with the potential to sound far better than red book CD.

M-dac + Cambridge universal player ??

[telecat]

Crackie said:

Players are certainly getting better imho but I find the difficulties arise when deciding between a good quality 'latest tech' machine and an older high end machine which employs earlier technology.

For example how does a new Audiolab M-Dac compare to a S/H Benchmark or Cyrus DAC-XP ?

In answer to the OP's question I think there are pros and cons for both; older high end often contains better sounding output stages and sound better when playing standard red book CDs. Their disadvantage is age and the potential to let you down like the Arcam. New gear in the same price range as S/H high end is still likely to sound very good with standard CD but will be under warranty. Choose the right new player and it will accept higher resolution inputs with the potential to sound far better than red book CD.

M-dac + Cambridge universal player ??

There's a couple of good DACS about at the moment you could pair with a Cambridge BD651/751. As well as the Audiolad there's the Chord Electronics QuteHD at £1K and the NAD M51 at £1500. Pricey but not as much as the Chord QBD76 or DCS latest offerings.

[Odie]

You could give changing the part yourself? or getting someone to do it for you? ive got a marantz CD63 (which i bought 8 years ago for £30) that still sounds awesome but the mechanism is getting old and skips (might see if it just needs a clean). Ive looked into it and the part (made by phillips) is only £12 but looking at the instructions it needs some soldering doing.

Yes Im a tight wad. lol

Does anyone on here work on Hi-fi equipment?

[Roop]

As I had hotly debated on PH before, it's all down to the DAC. Every single CD player DAC (and by every single one, I mean all of them used in CD players since they were released in the 1980s) can fully correct any errors or jitter every bit as well as the next one.

Quite simply, damaged discs aside, what goes into the DAC on a £10 player from a supermarket is exactly the same as that which goes into the DAC on a £15'000 player.

As such, it's the ability of the DAC to generate the analogue output and get that to your amplifier with minimum degradation and an acoustic profile that most appeals to an individual that makes a CD player. The only point at which the transport makes any difference is if your discs are damaged to the point that only a very high precise transport can read the data from the disc.

See my post here : http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&a...

[Odie]

Roop said:

Good stuff

So only the DAC matters? what about the rest of the stuff in the box and the box itself? Resonance and stuff from the case etc

[telecat]

Odie said:

Roop said:

Good stuff

So only the DAC matters? what about the rest of the stuff in the box and the box itself? Resonance and stuff from the case etc

Basically that's what he is saying. The bits around the DAC MAKE the player. It has to be said that Digital to Audio Converters are NOT exactly the same. Most in Cheap to mid range players are similar but beyond that More expensive and "graded" versions of the chips are used. These days most can handle signals up to 24-Bit 192 KHZ. In some cases such as DCS, Chord Electronics and NAD they use software running on a very powerful Processor to get the DAC characteristics they want. Others use complicated arrays of chips to process the signal. Basically if they have spent that much effort on the conversion they tend to spend more on the rest of the player to make sure it is as good as it can be.

[Roop]

Odie said:

So only the DAC matters? what about the rest of the stuff in the box and the box itself? Resonance and stuff from the case etc

Good question. To all intents and purposes, the sort of vibration that you will find a domestic CD player exposed to will only affect the mechanical aspects of the device ie: the transport and will be nothing like enough to cause any issues at all. It's not like a turntable which is quite the opposite. Certainly device generated vibrations and associated resonance can be all but discounted for domestic CD players. Think of a computer CD drive spinning the disc at up to 52x regular speed (circa 8,000rpm vs 150rpm for an audio CD player). These, no matter how cheap, manage to read data accurately. Even crap discs that are badly moulded and thus badly weighted will read, although the drive will often fall back to a lesser spin speed like 8x, but even then it’s still reading the data accurately at 8x the speed of an audio CD player. Remember, discs are digital data. Whether that data contains software or audio makes no difference – it’s (for the purposes of this thread – we could go into standards etc. but it’s not relevant) all the same to the transport.

Unlike transports, DACs do get better. A modern, high quality DAC will outperform a cheaper older one as it will have better characteristics such as signal-to-noise, maybe some analogue waveform smoothing, even custom profiles and such to give a certain 'tuned' sound. With DACs it really is personal preference. I have an old Arcam Alpha 7 CD player with a fairly basic Burr-Brown 1Bit DAC. I like the sound of it as it’s a pretty laid back performer compared with the stuff I tested it against in the similar price range when I bought it (Sony, Marantz etc) that were more ‘aggressive’ in terms of their delivery.

Of course there are a much wider range of DACs already built into CD players than there are external DACs, so you have a better choice when buying a whole new player, but it might be fun to plug a few different external DACs into the digital output of your current player and see what they sound like.

[Roop]

telecat said:

Basically that's what he is saying. The bits around the DAC MAKE the player. It has to be said that Digital to Audio Converters are NOT exactly the same. Most in Cheap to mid range players are similar but beyond that More expensive and "graded" versions of the chips are used. These days most can handle signals up to 24-Bit 192 KHZ. In some cases such as DCS, Chord Electronics and NAD they use software running on a very powerful Processor to get the DAC characteristics they want. Others use complicated arrays of chips to process the signal. Basically if they have spent that much effort on the conversion they tend to spend more on the rest of the player to make sure it is as good as it can be.

Correct. If you are spending what amounts to many hundreds or thousands of pounds on a beautifully engineered digital-to-analogue converter, most customers don't want it paired to a $5 CD transport and stuck inside a generic box, even if it does do the job every bit as well. Think of it like an expensive watch in that respect. You have got to pay a fortune to get a mechanical watch that even comes close to the accuracy of a low-cost quartz movement, but people do becuse they like the engineering that went into it. Nothing wrong with this approach, but dump the mechanism from a Timex into your Panerai or Blancpain and it's just not quite the same, even though it's an equal (or better) performer.

The DAC and everything after it on the analogue side is what counts.

[Adrian W]

Roop said:

Quite simply, damaged discs aside, what goes into the DAC on a £10 player from a supermarket is exactly the same as that which goes into the DAC on a £15'000

287

I'm sorry but that is just not true, in most low cost cd players theDAC will be integrated as part of an ASIC, as you go up the scale the designer will use Analog Devices or Burr Brown/Texas, on the top end players it will be Discrete

All completely different ways of doing it

[Roop]

Adrian W said:

Roop said:

Quite simply, damaged discs aside, what goes into the DAC on a £10 player from a supermarket is exactly the same as that which goes into the DAC on a £15'000

287

I'm sorry but that is just not true, in most low cost cd players theDAC will be integrated as part of an ASIC, as you go up the scale the designer will use Analog Devices or Burr Brown/Texas, on the top end players it will be Discrete

All completely different ways of doing it

I think you maybe got the wrong end of the stick. I'm afraid in my hurried response I didn't convey what I meant very well with that particular sentence.

What I mean is that the data stream that goes into the DAC (provided that the disc is not so damaged that the transport struggles to read it) is completely indistinguishable as to whether it came from a super-cheap player or a super high-end player. Of course, the DACs themselves are absolutely worlds apart as I explained in my earlier post.

Hope this clears it up.

[Adrian W]

Ahh ok, I think the next big step will be clocks, having recently played with, I was amazed by the difference reclocking does.

[Crackie]

Roop said:

To all intents and purposes, the sort of vibration that you will find a domestic CD player exposed to will only affect the mechanical aspects of the device ie: the transport and will be nothing like enough to cause any issues at all. It's not like a turntable which is quite the opposite. Certainly device generated vibrations and associated resonance can be all but discounted for domestic CD players.

Hi Roop ~ are you meaning more recent DVD type transports or earlier CD type mechanisms ? I do think that vibrations can make a difference in older domestic CD players. This may only noticeable at extremely high playback levels but the negative effect of vibration is easily noticeable in my experience. When playback was loud enough, the error correction in my late 90's Exposure CD player would run out of brain power and the player used to skip. I located the Exposure on small bicycle inner tube to try and decouple it from the rack it was sat on and once it was sat on that partially inflated bag of air and rubber, it never skipped again no matter how loud the system was playing.

Some older PH'ers will remember a series of early 90's Technics players whose model numbers were SL-PG###A. The A suffix is the important bit because it meant they were EU built units with a Philips 'swing arm' mechanism inside rather than the worm and wheel sled type usually employed by Technics. The 200A, 277A, 420A, 520A, 620A all sold for around the £200 pound mark but were acknowledged to sound way better than Technic's own top of the range 'battleship' models. I think the laser mech was making the difference.

Edited by Crackie on Friday 29th June 08:08

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Marantz CD-63 - £30 off ebay.

£250 worth of modifications and it sounds senstaional:

- New SUperclock, dedicated PSUs, new voltage regs, new caps and components, upgraded op-amps and removal of HDAM and other wasteful circuitry, chassis deadening etc etc.

It might not look good, but that certainly doesn't matter once the disc starts spinning